Snitching for the feds can be dangerous work, but it also can be pretty lucrative.

One South Florida man who has been working undercover as a confidential informant for 31 years has been paid about $1.5 million for his efforts, according to court records and testimony that shed some light on the usually shadowy world of informants.

The payments, which appear to have started during President Ronald Reagan's second term in office, average out to more than $48,000 per year.

The Drug Enforcement Administration won't say who he is or why he does what he does, but some information about him slipped out in court this week after the DEA used him in a heroin sting.

"It's surprising that he's still alive … that he's been able to survive," U.S. Magistrate Judge William Matthewman said during a hearing in federal court in West Palm Beach on Monday. The judge was a Miami police sergeant and respected defense lawyer for years before his appointment to the bench.

The informant, whatever his name is, does not appear to fit the usual profile of stereotypical snitches.

It's common, especially in South Florida, for people who get caught doing something illegal to cooperate with authorities to try to get a better deal for themselves or reduce the amount of prison time they must serve. Federal prosecutors frequently recommend lesser punishments or sentence reductions of 10 percent to 50 percent for defendants who help them bring other criminals to justice.

But in the case of the mystery informant, whom they refer to as a "CS," or confidential source, DEA agents portrayed him as a more enterprising figure.

U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration

This file photo from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration shows the powder form of heroin.

This file photo from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration shows the powder form of heroin.

(U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration)

After they used him in a law enforcement drug sting that led to the arrests of two men in West Palm Beach, agents wrote four intriguing lines about him in a footnote to the criminal complaint:

"CS has been working with the DEA since 1985. CS does not have a criminal history; CS provides information to the DEA for compensation. To date, CS has been compensated approximately $1.5 million for … his confidential information. The DEA has corroborated CS's information with other evidence and information gathered through the course of its investigations and CS's information has proven to be accurate and reliable."

Stacks of cash in drug bust

Defense lawyers representing the two men that he most recently helped to arrest were more skeptical and questioned DEA Special Agent Regina Claxton about the informant.

Wellington Melo-Ferreira and Michael Octavio Ithier were arrested Sept. 16 on federal charges they were trying to buy more than 8.5 pounds of heroin in exchange for $188,000 in a hotel room in West Palm Beach. The judge ordered that they remain locked up pending trial in federal court in Fort Lauderdale. If convicted, they face a maximum of life in federal prison.

Melo-Ferreira, 38, a cook and DJ who emigrated to the U.S. from the Dominican Republic in 1996 and became a U.S. citizen earlier this year, said he moved to Miami about two years ago after living in Boston. Ithier, 42, a bus driver from Queens, N.Y., said he had previously lived in Broward County.

Agents said a relative of Melo-Ferreira gave the informant a phone number for Melo-Ferreira, and the two men spoke by phone about the informant procuring at least 8.5 pounds of heroin for him. After two meetings with Melo-Ferreira and Ithier at a coffee shop in CityPlace, the informant arranged to deliver the heroin to a nearby hotel room a few days later.

When the men said the money to pay for the drugs had arrived from "up north," the informant and another person who was working undercover with police agreed to deliver the heroin. Agents said a woman was also waiting in the hotel room to test the quality of the drug delivery.

Most of the interactions were captured on audio or video recordings, or both, authorities said. Prosecutors say informants often have information and access that agents simply can't get on their own.

DEA agents and Palm Beach County sheriff's deputies stormed into the hotel room and arrested the two suspects just as the drugs, which were a sham, were to be delivered. More than $200,000, in rubber-banded stacks of cash was found on a desk in the room and another $4,000 in cash was found in the glove compartment of their rental car, agents said.

On the job for decades

Agent Claxton testified that she has worked with the informant on a number of occasions but is not his formal DEA "handler." Federal agencies typically assign an agent to supervise a paid informant, partly because investigators have to keep records about the informant's work, payments they receive and any allegations of misconduct against them.

"We found that the DEA did not adequately oversee payments to its sources, which exposes the DEA to an unacceptably increased potential for fraud, waste, and abuse, particularly given the frequency with which DEA offices utilize and pay confidential sources," the audit concluded.

Claxton confirmed in court that the informant had been paid about $1.5 million. Under questioning from Ithier's lawyer Ronald Chapman, Claxton testified the informant had not yet been paid for his recent work, but "possibly" may be paid in the future.

"He's been paid several times [in the past], I've been part of that," she testified. She also said she was not aware of any allegations of misconduct against the informant and did not know how many cases he had worked on in the last 31 years.

Melo-Ferreira's lawyer Assistant Federal Public Defender Neison Marks told the judge he found it "concerning" and "very worrying" that the case was a sting, involving an informant.

"I've never seen a case like this," Marks told the judge. He argued that when a law enforcement agency has "that much time and money invested" in an informant, it could leave agents unwilling to challenge or "take him down as an informant" because it could damage a lot of criminal cases.

Chapman questioned whether the DEA had legal grounds to enter the hotel room without a search warrant.

The judge acknowledged the defense may try to legally challenge some aspects of the case but said he wasn't going to discuss the public policy aspects of using paid informants in making his decision about detaining the men.

"Heroin is a real scourge on the community and it causes a lot of deaths. … It's a serious drug and a dangerous drug," the judge said.

The public defender's office does not allow its employees to comment on pending cases.

Chapman said Thursday that he is waiting to review the evidence.

"When the government is paying for information, it gives a real strong incentive to the undercover source to do dubious things," Chapman said. "That's a good salary. You're going to start thinking, 'They're not going to keep paying me that much if I'm not giving them what they want.'"

Even if informants do nothing "dubious," Chapman said, he wonders what they get up to: "Who's he hanging out with to get this information? I doubt he's getting it at church."

Other lawyers agreed.

"There's a lot about this that strikes me as odd," said Paul Petruzzi, a veteran South Florida lawyer who handles a lot of drug cases in federal and state courts. The most unusual aspect was the length of time the informant has been working, said Petruzzi, who is not involved in the case.

"The reality is that South Florida is crawling with informants — people who are on the payroll of the pick-your-alphabet-soup of federal agencies or working off whatever legal transgression was their latest legal transgression," he said.

In his experience, Petruzzi said a very high percentage of federal drug cases in South Florida involve informants of some kind. He said he's handled cases where informants received regular payments and others where they received a 25 percent cut of the cash or value of drugs they helped agents find.

Paid federal informants usually have written contracts, known as informant agreements or packages, that spell out the terms of their work, and their backgrounds are supposed to be vetted by agents, several lawyers said. Many have other jobs and Petruzzi said he's been involved in cases that had informants who were used-car salesmen, Realtors and drug dealers.

Using informants is fraught with problems, he said, which include blurring the line between law enforcement and civilians, the danger that poorly supervised informants could entrap innocent people and the fact that agents sometimes became "too buddy-buddy" and trusting of their snitches.

"Of course, there is a societal value in having paid informants do the kind of work that agents say is tough for them to do, but I'm not sure whether all of the potential problems they can cause outweigh their value to law enforcement," Petruzzi said.

'A duty to protect them'

Anne-Judith Lambert, the DEA's spokeswoman in South Florida, told the Sun Sentinel she could not release any more information about the informant and would not make him available for an interview, even if he was allowed to remain anonymous. She also said she could not divulge any details about how often the informant is paid and whether he receives regular payments or a percentage of the value of the drugs and money he helps law enforcement to seize.

"They're confidential informants for a very good reason and we never make comments about an informant," Lambert said. "We have a duty to protect them."

Lambert acknowledged it was noteworthy that the informant had no criminal history and had been working for the agency for such a long time. She said she could not reveal his motives.

"It could be altruistic, people have different reasons," she said. "There's some people, their child or a family member has been affected by drugs or they see what it's doing to their community and that may motivate them. But there are any number of reasons."

"I'm in the wrong business," is a pretty common reaction from people when they hear that an informant received so much money from the feds, Lambert said.

"I'd just say the grass is not always greener on the other side," Lambert said. "You never know what the informant is going through or the dangers they face, the risks they are taking on."